


A Table for Two

by maggief



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Teeny bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggief/pseuds/maggief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur meets Merlin when he gets stood up, and it's all good in the end... Short bit of mostly fluff. Based off this <a href="http://kinkme-merlin.livejournal.com/33344.html?thread=35407424#t35407424">kmm prompt</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Table for Two

Arthur’s ten minutes early when he arrives at the restaurant, but he figures getting inside and getting a drink down him will do wonders for his confidence. He pushes the door open, shaking the snow out of his hair and pulling his gloves off. The restaurant is softly lit, but not too dark as to be excessively romantic, and it's nice and warm as well, which is a welcome change to the bitter cold outside.

He steps up to the small stand where the reservations are listed and tries to peek down at the book. He hadn’t thought to reserve a table, he hadn’t wanted to make things too concrete and jinx it. He still wasn’t sure if she was going to turn up, but he was prepared to wait as long as he needed to. Luckily the reservations list looks fairly empty, and looking around the restaurant reveals it’s not too busy either. Hopefully he’ll have no trouble getting a table.

He waits there for a minute before one of the waiters spots him and heads over. They seem to be understaffed – Arthur can actually only see this one waiter on the floor – but he’s smiling at Arthur nonetheless. _He’s attractive_ is Arthur’s first thought, and it takes him a moment to shake it out of his head, he doesn’t want to get distracted tonight.

“Hi there. How can I help you this evening?”

Arthur clears his throat before speaking, palms sweaty although he swears that’s because of the heat of the restaurant, and definitely not anything else.

“Table for two please, near the window if possible?”

“Sure, no problem,” the waiter replies, although Arthur could have sworn his smile had dimmed slightly to hear Arthur wasn’t dining alone. Probably just his imagination. “Follow me.”

The waiter seats him at the table furthest away from the door along the window front. There’s a fire burning merrily along the adjoining wall, and Arthur sits with his back towards it, offering him a perfect view of the door as he waits.

“Would you like a drink while you wait?”

Arthur breaks his stare with the door to realise the waiter hasn’t left yet. “A whisky would be great, thank you.”

The waiter hums in reply, and returns a moment later with a Johnnie on the rocks, before leaving Arthur alone. As he waits, he can’t help but glance over at the waiter, time and time again. Further viewing hasn’t disproved his original assertion that the man was good looking. He had scruffy black hair, and matching stubble, which was a weakness of Arthur’s. He also had the bluest eyes that Arthur had ever seen, bluer even than his own, which he’d always been pretty proud of. To top it all off, hiding under that stubble, the man had dimples when he smiled, fucking dimples. He was gorgeous.

It’s almost as if the waiter can hear Arthur thinking about him, as he looks over with a small smile playing on his (oh so kissable) lips. Arthur takes a hurried sip of his whisky to try to hide his blatant staring and the small flush creeping up his neck at being caught. He winces as the alcohol hits the back of his throat – he doesn’t really like the stuff, but it will calm his nerves quicker than a beer will. 

Ten minutes go by, and 8 ‘o’ clock comes and goes. Arthur finishes his drink, and the waiter brings him another one without being asked. Arthur flashes him a grateful thank-you and returns to watching the door. The second whisky is finished without anyone entering the small restaurant, and the waiter comes over again.

“You ok there?” his tone is soft, but not overly pitying. It’s clear that he thinks Arthur has been stood up.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Arthur replies, stubbornly refusing to entertain any other possibility apart from “She’s obviously just running a bit late,” gesturing to the empty chair opposite him.

The waiter hums sympathetically. “Well I’m Merlin, I’ll be your waiter for this evening, as you might have guessed. Would you like to look at the menu while you wait?”

Arthur’s thankful for that small gesture, thankful that the waiter, _Merlin_ , doesn’t call him out on the all-too-likely reality of the situation.

“Yeah thanks, and another whisky please?”

A minute later Merlin places both on the table and gives Arthur a small squeeze on the shoulder. “She’ll turn up.”

Nearly an hour later, once Arthur has eaten all the breadsticks, it’s clear that no one’s coming to meet him. He’s resting his head in his hands when Merlin comes over again. He’d been rushed off his feet since giving Arthur that third drink, but the restaurant was starting to quieten down now.

“Just to let you know, the kitchen’s going to close in a couple of minutes, if you wanted to order anything…”

Arthur sighs audibly before glancing down at the menu before him. He doesn’t need to, he’s looked at it so much in the last hour he has the damn thing memorised. 

“I can really recommend the linguine, it’s fantastic.” And the smile he gives Arthur is more than enough to convince him to give it a try, if only as an excuse to stay here a bit longer.

“Sure, I’ll try it.”

“Coming right up,” Merlin replies, winking at Arthur. He can’t help but smile in response.

By the time Arthur has eaten his pasta there’s only one other table left occupied – an older couple lingering over the last dregs of their wine. As Arthur watches them, they finish up and gather their coats, leaving what Arthur can see is a generous tip for Merlin. He’d thought that maybe the scruffy-haired man had been flirting with him, but perhaps he’s that way with all his customers? He watches Merlin pick up his tip before making his way over to Arthur; he wonders if he’s going to be thrown out now he’s the only thing stopping Merlin from finishing up and heading home.

“How was the linguine?” He’s all smiles, still, and shows no annoyance at Arthur’s continued presence.

“It was delicious. Thanks for the recommendation.” It really had been good, and Arthur never would have chosen it himself.

“You’re welcome,” Merlin replies; with another one of those show-stopping smiles that bring out his dimples and are already well on their way to ruining Arthur for good.

“Well, if I can tempt you again… Our chef says the special dessert, the tiramisu, won’t keep until tomorrow. So if you would like some, it’s on the house.”

Arthur has a sneaking suspicion that Merlin isn’t actually allowed to offer desserts for free just because someone has been stood up, but Arthur readily agrees. Tiramisu is one of his favourites, and he really does need a ‘pick-me-up’ right now.

He’s slightly confused when Merlin brings out two plates – surely he doesn’t look that pathetic that he warrants double? But that’s not what Merlin has in mind. He places one plate down in front of Arthur, and the other in front of the still unoccupied seat opposite.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

Arthur just nods in response, gesturing magnanimously towards the empty seat as he fights the blush threatening to creep onto his face. 

It turns out Merlin owns the place, or his uncle does, and so actually he probably is allowed to give away free dessert after all. They talk for over an hour, until the chef finally emerges from the kitchen to tell Merlin he’s going home, and shouldn’t he be thinking of doing the same?

Merlin had ignored the chef’s advice and laughed at Arthur’s jokes instead. It was the best tiramisu he’d ever had. 

Both men went home alone that night, but met up for coffee three days later, Arthur nearly as nervous as he had been at the restaurant.

“This is a date, right?” Merlin had asked as he sat down opposite Arthur, windswept and flushed, and looking completely fuckable for it. Before Arthur could answer, he carried on “Because at first I thought you were waiting for a date the other night, but now I’m not so sure. So I just wanted to check that this was a date, and you like men. You do like men, right?”

Arthur took pity on him then. “Merlin. Merlin! Do you always talk this much?”

Merlin let out a sigh of relief at Arthur’s interruption. “Only when I’m nervous,” he admitted.

Arthur couldn’t help but smile at that, “Yes, this is a date, Merlin. As long as you want it to be?” It wasn’t quite as extensive as Merlin’s babbling, but hell, Arthur was nervous too, and he wanted to make sure.

Once they’d established that this was in fact a date, the afternoon flew by until suddenly it was 5pm, and Merlin had to dash off to get ready to open the restaurant. As Arthur watched him go, rushing out the door in a flurry of trailing scarf and scattered snowflakes, he realised he was well and truly fucked and completely falling for Merlin already.

It wasn’t until 6 months later, six months of coffee dates, and heated kisses and well, lots of sex, that Merlin finally asked. They were lying in bed, having one of those lazy Sunday mornings that was made even more perfect because it was raining outside and neither of them had anything they had to do that day. Arthur was trailing kisses down Merlin’s stomach, already interested in round three apparently, when the words just jumped out of Merlin’s mouth.

“Who were you meeting that night?”

Arthur stiffened immediately and didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He stopped pressing kisses into Merlin’s skin and sat up in bed instead. He left a hand resting on Merlin’s ribs though that let Merlin know it was ok that he’d asked, but that he needed a moment.

After several deep breaths, Arthur spoke, “I was waiting for my sister.”

Merlin’s brow furrowed in confusion, “You’ve never mentioned a sister.”

It was Arthur’s turn to look confused, and he scrunched his face up as if in pain. “I—”. He rubbed a hand across his face, frustrated.

“Hey, it’s ok,” Merlin soothed, sitting up too and laying a warm hand on Arthur’s back. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” He was curious, but if it was causing Arthur this much pain just to think about it, he wasn’t that desperate to know.

“No, I want to tell you, I just… My father, our father, wasn’t kind to her. She left when she was 16, and I—, I didn’t go with her. I stayed, and she never forgave me for that, I guess she still hasn’t. My father’s been dead for two years now, and I thought that she might want to see me again.”

Arthur falls silent, and Merlin is just about to speak, to offer some words of comfort and love, when Arthur whispers in a small, broken voice, “She said she’d be there,” and that’s when the first tears fall. Merlin holds Arthur as he cries, muttering nonsense words and kissing him gently. Merlin wondered how his own flesh and blood could be so cruel as to reduce Arthur, strong, proud Arthur, to this.

Merlin hears a lot about Morgana over the following weeks, and while he’s happy that Arthur clearly trusts him enough to open up this final part of himself, at the same time it breaks his heart to see how much it still hurts him even now.

It does however mean that a year to the day after Merlin first met Arthur, Merlin recognises Morgana when she walks into his restaurant. It’s like some bizarre time-travel, and the insane notion flitters through Merlin’s brain that perhaps she’s been travelling with The Doctor, and accidently turned up a year late. That’s absurd, of course, and as he goes up to greet her as a good maître d should, his smile feels plastered to his face, sticky and fake.

“How can I help you this evening?”

“A table for one, please.”

Merlin leads her to a table in the corner, and he’s left shaking as he walks away, filled with so much anger at this stranger. He feels outraged that she should come to his place of work, his uncle’s restaurant, but of course she has no idea who he is.

He gets Sam, the young waitress who works there as well, to serve her that night, and she eventually leaves without speaking to Merlin again, but he’s still shaken by it when he gets home to Arthur.

“Merlin? What’s wrong?” His voice is so soft with concern that Merlin almost bursts into tears. It just isn’t fair.

He sits down on the sofa, and Arthur sits down next to him, wrapping a strong arm around his shoulders. He takes a deep breath to steel his nerves.

“Morgana came into the restaurant tonight.”

A sharp intake of breath from Arthur is the only indication that he’s heard Merlin, but a few moments later Merlin can feel the arm resting around his shoulders start to shake. He twists in Arthur’s grip until he’s facing the other man.

“Hey, sshhh, it’s ok. It’s ok.” He rests his forehead against Arthur’s, and they sit there breathing each other in for a long time before Arthur speaks.

“How did she look?” After all this time, he just wants to know if she’s ok.

“She looked good, Arthur, she seemed really ok.”

Arthur nods once, before dragging Merlin to bed. He doesn’t speak again, just presses soft kisses into Merlin’s skin.

When Morgana returns to the restaurant the next night, Merlin calls Arthur straight away, and then confronts her.

“Why are you here?” She doesn’t look shocked by the question, and returns Merlin’s angry glare coolly.

“A girl’s got to eat, right?”

“You know who I am, don’t you?” angry, but then softer, “Are you still trying to punish him?”

Morgana starts at that comment, before shaking her head quickly.

“No! No, definitely not. I—, I wasn’t ready last year, and I’m really sorry. Truly, I am.”

Merlin shakes his head ruefully, “It’s not me you need to be apologising to.”

“I know,” she sighs heavily, looking down into her lap, letting her long dark hair cover her face. Merlin leaves her alone after that, waits for Arthur to arrive.

Morgana and Arthur sit there long after closing time, but Merlin is happy to stay there all night if that’s what they need. Merlin can see that Arthur’s hurting, and it hurts him in turn to watch, but there’s something else there, something softer in his eyes. Both Morgana and Arthur cry several times during the evening, but when they finally clasp hands across the table at 2am, Merlin knows that one day everything will be ok between them. He heaves a contented sigh of relief and heads into the kitchen; there might be some tiramisu hidden at the back of the fridge if they’re lucky.


End file.
